1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for correlating daily consumable intakes with physiological parameters. More specifically, it relates to a computer-assisted system and method for adjudging the effect of consumable intakes, such as the amount of calories, fat, protein, carbohydrate, minerals and vitamins consumed daily, or the amount of a drug ingested daily, on physiological parameters, such as weight, blood glucose levels, or red blood cell count.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
A great body of literature has been published in the last fifty years pertaining to the importance of good consumption habits in the maintenance of health. While the general public is far more educated as to such matters than their ancestors, several studies suggest poor consumption habits still pervade in our society.
Nutritional studies suggest that people today continue to consume foods containing high amounts of saturated fat, too many calories, and too few vitamins and minerals, although they know these foods to be xe2x80x9cunhealthy.xe2x80x9d Likewise, public awareness of the fact that drugs may cause serious side-effects, has not eventuated in a substantial reduction in the misuse and over-use of, for example, over-the-counter medications. A significant factor in many people""s poor diets and abuse of medications is the tremendous explosion of multi-ingredient pre-packaged foodstuffs and drugs. that has occurred within the last century.
In response to an outcry of world-wide health experts with respect to less than xe2x80x9chealthyxe2x80x9d ingredients not infrequently found in pre-packaged consumables, many governments have mandated that manufacturers of pre-packaged consumables provide in their labelling certain consumption information such as the identity of the ingredients, the concentration of ingredients and/or nutritional information. In the United States foodstuff information not atypically includes the ingredients contained within the foodstuff, the number of calories in a serving, the number of servings in a container, the percentage of fat, protein, carbohydrates provided by a serving, and a measure of the vitamins and minerals provided by the foodstuff. Over-the-counter medications are not infrequently labelled to delineate the drug products, and concentration of drug products, contained within each tablet of the medication.
In order to keep the public more informed concerning the foodstuffs they eat, some governments have further required manufacturers to compare the nutritional contents of their products against a standard daily nutritional recommendation, e.g. the xe2x80x9cDaily Valuexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cRecommend Daily Allowancexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cMinimum Daily Allowance.xe2x80x9d Such comparisons are often made in terms of percentages. While such information has gone a long way towards educating people with respect to the nutritional value of what they eat, most people do not have the time or patience to consider whether the foods they eat over a day, week or month are providing them with a nutritionally balanced diet. The latter observation is confirmed by the large number of obese people in the Western World.
In a similar vein, many governments require manufacturers of drugs to label their drugs with warnings concerning the side-effects that maybe elicited by consumption of the drug. While most consumers are aware of the existence of warning labelling, few people take the time to read all of the warnings appended with every drug which they consume daily. This is particularly true with respect to over-the-counter medications. Side-effects caused by these drugs are often attributed to other causes.
Presently, monitoring of dietary and medication consumption, as well as the consumption of other consumables, is cumbersome. Such monitoring is conventionally done by use of log books in which the subject records the consumables, and the quantity of consumables consumed during a particular day.
Nutrition counseling not uncommonly involves the use of complex algorithms and calculations. Dietary diligence or the use of restricted menu lists is frequently prescribed in a universal manner, rather than tailoring the counseling to the individuals themselves. Nearly everyone is familiar with diet books which propound strict regimens of meals or which limit food consumption to particular food stuffs. More recently, cards which permit persons to select form a prolifery of food stuffs in select categories have been introduced. While easier to follow than strict dietary regimens, such cards fail to take into account the widespread xe2x80x9ccheatingxe2x80x9d that occurs by persons throughout the day. Specialized meals are not always available to a person during the day, especially at work.
Counseling with respect to drug use is presently limited mostly to consultations with pharmacists and physicians. Consultations with physicians tend to be brief and nearly always center on the appropriate use of prescribed medications. Consultations with pharmacists while generally longer, and while often concerning both prescription and over-the-counter medications, are often limited by the ever-increasing time constraints being placed on pharmacists to fill more prescriptions per hour. As with nutritional consultations, drug consultations frequently involve the use of algorithms, especially in regard to the determination of when steady-state blood levels, or maximum blood levels, of a drug given on a repeated dosage schedule will be achieved. Variations in physiological parameters often plateau when drug blood concentrations level off.
The monitoring of consumable intake, especially with regard to nutritional balance and drug intake, is arguably as important as the monitoring of such physiological parameters as blood pressure and pulse rate alone. Numerous computerized devices have been introduced to record and display physiological parameters, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,682 (temperature, pulse rate, and respiration rate). Such devices have greatly aided physicians in tailoring therapeutic strategies to the individual especially if such measurements are taken over a long period of time. For example, a patient""s drug therapy is often based on multi-daily blood pressure readings taken by a patient with a computerized blood pressure monitor, such multiple readings being far more indicative of the patient""s blood pressure status than one isolated.reading at the physician""s office.
Nutritional status has long been known to impact greatly upon physiological homeostasis. Over the past two centuries, scientists have discovered numerous components in our foodstuffs that are necessary to our healthxe2x80x94many of these substances being referred to as xe2x80x9cessential vitamins.xe2x80x9d In the last half of the twentieth century, scientists further discovered that many substances present in foodstuffs, while not needed by the body for immediate survival, greatly aid in the maintenance of good healthxe2x80x94e.g. fiber and xe2x80x9cnon-essential vitaminsxe2x80x9d. Scientists further learned that balance in protein/fat/carbohydrate consumption is also of importance in longevity.
In a similar vein, consumption of drugs, while often ameliorating a perturbation in homeostasis, not infrequently cause physiological abnormalities themselves. This effect is often noted when patients chose over-the-counter (xe2x80x9cOTCxe2x80x9d) drugs without the aid of health professionals. For example, decongestants may increase blood pressure.
Consumable intakes may have significant effects upon the morbidity rate of persons inflicted with several diseases. Many people require a special diet which places their nutritional needs outside of the standard daily nutritional recommendation. Further, many people can not consume certain drugs which are freely available in OTC preparations.
For example, diabetics are often cautioned by their physicians to carefully monitor their daily intake of protein, fat and carbohydrates. For many diabetics, variations in dietary consumption, especially of carbohydrates, can have dramatic effects on their requirement for insulin. Different foodstuffs not uncommonly have different effects on a person""s blood glucose level, a level which is important for good heath. Blood glucose measurements are taken by diabetics numerous times during the day, especially after meals. Diabetics are frequently warned to refrain from cough preparations etc., which contain high sucrose concentrations.
Consonantly, persons afflicted with Folling""s disease (xe2x80x9cPKUxe2x80x9d) must be careful with respect to their consumption of foods containing phenylalanine. Person""s with Folling""s disease have a congenital abnormality which eventuates in a deficit of phenylalanine 4-monoxygenase activity. Consumption of phenylalanine by PKU patients over prolonged periods of time may result in neurologic abnormalities. Person""s with Folling""s disease not uncommonly monitor their blood or urine phenylalanine levels daily.
As further example, persons with depression are not infrequently placed on monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Persons on the drug (and 2 weeks after discontinuing the drug) are cautioned against eating foods with high tyramine or tryptophan content. They are further cautioned about consuming drugs which contain decongestants. Consumption of any of these consumables may lead to a hypertensive crisis.
While much is known pertaining to the physiological effect of certain consumables in select maladies, little has been done to relate the effect of daily consumption of the multitude of consumables to physiological perturbations. The latter is most likely due to the difficulty in getting subjects to record their daily consumptions and the need to solve often complex algorithms in order to appropriately adjudge such relationships.
A relatively recent development in the consumable processing art, as well as product sales in general, has been the identification of a consumable by a unique identifier encoded in the form of a xe2x80x9cbar codexe2x80x9d. Heretofore, the bar code has been used to identify the product and its manufacturer, used to re-order goods and employed at check-out counters for coupling the product to a price.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a computer-assisted system and method for electronically coupling consumption information with respect to consumables, including, but not limited to, food stuffs, drugs, cosmetics, with consumable-identifiers, for retrieving such consumption information upon input of a consumable-identifier, and for computationally-relating the consumption information from one consumable with the consumption information from a plurality of other consumables.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus which permits correlation of human physiological parameters, such as body weight or blood glucose levels, with consumable intake over set time periods.
In one embodiment, a foodstuff identifier is linked in a first database to the nutritional information generally provided on pre-packaged foodstuffs, or is linked to estimated nutritional information with respect to a non-prepackaged foodstuffs. Using an electronic means, a consumer of the foodstuff converts the foodstuff identifier on the packages of the pre-packaged foodstuffs, or the foodstuff identifiers associated with the non-prepackaged product in a book, manual, database or other compendium, which are consumed during the day into a digital datastream which is downloaded into a second data processing unit which is processed along with time data with respect to the time of consumption and stored in a second database. Along with the foodstuff identifiers, the consumer may also input approximate serving size or amount consumed, thereby storing digitalized information in the second database regarding the foodstuff consumed, the amount of each particular foodstuff consumed, and the time of consumption. Physiological measurements such as weight gain, or blood sugar concentrations may also be input into the second database coupled with time data. At set time intervals, typically daily or weekly, the consumer sends to a first data processing unit connected to the first database the digitalized information stored in the second database. The first data processing unit correlates the nutritional information pertaining to each foodstuff reported to have been consumed during the time interval and with computational manipulation, adjusting for amount consumed, provides a readout of nutritional parameters, such as total calories or carbohydrates, consumed over the time period. Recommendations for improving the diet may be addended to the readout of the nutritional parameters by linking the recommendations to the results of pre-programmed nutritional algorithms or manually by a nutritionist or other qualified professional. If physiological measurements were also input, the first data processing unit may use algorithms well-known in the art to determine whether variations in physiological measurements may be related to foodstuff consumption.
In another embodiment, a consumable (such as a drug) identifier is linked in a first database connected to a first data processing unit to the ingredient information generally provided on pre-packaged consumables, or is linked to estimated ingredient information with respect to a non-prepackaged consumables. Using an electronic means, a consumer of the consumables converts the consumable identifier on the packages of the pre-packaged consumables, or the consumable identifiers associated with the non-prepackaged consumable in a book, manual, database or other compendium, which are consumed during the day into a digital datastream which is downloaded into a second data processing unit which is processed along with time data with respect to the time of consumption and stored in a second database. Along with the consumable identifiers, the consumer may also input the amount consumed, thereby storing digitalized information in the second database regarding each consumable consumed, the amount of each consumable consumed, and the time of consumption in the second database. Physiological measurements such as blood pressure or pulse rate may also be input into the second database coupled with time data. At set time intervals, typically daily or weekly, the consumer sends to a first data processing unit connected to the first database the digitalized information stored in the second database. The first data processing unit correlates the ingredient information stored in the first database with each consumable reported to have been consumed during the time interval. The data processing unit in such embodiment is programmed such that it recognizes changes in the measured physiological parameter having been measured over the defined time period and such that it can relate known effects and side-effects of the consumed ingredients with the measured parameter. For example, it is well-known in the art that sympathomimetic drugs can increase blood pressure. An increase in blood pressure over time can be computationally related to an increase in sympathomimetic consumption. Further, it is well-known in the art that most drugs following first order kinetics will reach steady-state blood concentrations after approximately four half-times. The processing unit can be provided with such half-time information such-that it can be determined if any change of the measured physiological parameter dissipates after the four half-times of each ingredient transpiresxe2x80x94such dissipation strengthening the conclusion that the drug is leading to an change in the measured parameter. Recommendations for adjusting the consumption habits of the consumer may be generated by means of a program or manually by a pharmacist, pharmacologist, toxicologist, physician, nurse or other qualified professional.
The present invention covers the concept that the first database and second database may be the same or different databases maintained or housed in the same data processing unit. The present invention also covers the concept that the consumption habits of either humans or animals may be monitored.
There are many possible modifications and changes which could be made to the system without straying from the applicant""s present invention. Such modifications would be obvious to those skilled in the art and should not limit the scope of applicant""s claimed invention.